


Postcards From Pristina

by smallvictory



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 21:06:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17856962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallvictory/pseuds/smallvictory
Summary: a collection of shorts and oneshots, 5k words or less each.





	1. Let's Stay Together

Mike had that look again: the fretting-about-the-wedding expression. Mick couldn’t see his face from how they were sitting on the living room couch after dinner, Mike laying with his head up against Mick’s side while he scrolled through recipe blogs, but he didn’t have to. He could just tell by the way Mike picked at his numb hand and wiggled one of his knees that he was fretting. 

What was even left to fret about? The wedding was in July, a month away. Everything Mick could think of had been planned and squared off, and now the couple’s biggest worry should only have been their mutual impatience to be married.

Then again, one of Mike’s greatest talents, aside from fretting, was picking out details that the older man never would have noticed without him. Maybe there really was something he’d missed in the planning process. 

“What’s on your mind, babe?” he asked, setting his laptop aside and laying an arm over Mike’s shoulders. 

“I can’t dance, dude,” Mike said bluntly and completely outside of anything Mick was expecting him to say. 

Cocking an eyebrow at him, he let Mike’s head slide into his lap. “Is...that going to be a problem in the near future?” he asked. 

“Well, yeah, ‘cause you’re supposed to dance at your wedding!” Mike replied, waving his hands around for emphasis. “I dance like a fuckin’ goober.”

Mick snorted at that choice of words, but he could tell that his fiance was genuinely worried about this, as ridiculous a thing as it was to be worrying about. The idea of dancing at the wedding hadn’t even crossed his mind. That was one of those things that Mick figured would just happen naturally in the moment, but it was sweet, he thought, that Mike was thinking about it so long beforehand. “I mean,” he said, “We don’t  _ have _ to dance, if you don’t want to.” He smoothed Mike’s hair back and smiled down at those big, brown, concerned puppydog eyes, giving his eyebrow ring a gentle, playful tug. “That’s, like, a heterosexual tradition, anyway.”

Mike appeared to consider his response for a long time, folding his hands on his chest and chewing the inside of his cheek. “...I  _ do  _ want to dance with you, though,” he finally said, with his lips in a meek little pout.

Well, if Mike wanted to dance at their wedding, then Mick would make sure he had the time of his life doing it.

“Want me to teach you?” he offered.

Mike nodded emphatically and the two stood up from the couch. Adjusting his sweatpants on his hips, Mick padded over to the cabinet on the wall that housed the stereo system, opening the doors on the bottom to reveal his expansive collection of cassettes. 

“What are you looking for?” Mike asked, bouncing anxiously back and forth on his feet. He was already embarrassed and they hadn’t even started—his brain showed him flashbacks to the only other time he had ever slow danced in his life, in high school, with a friend named Donnie, who he could remember so clearly as she looked in the dim purple lighting in the school gym, furrowing her brows at him because his hands had been braced so stiffly and awkwardly on her shoulders, probably clammy with sweat. He had barely been able to keep his eyes on hers for the duration of the dance, and yet somehow she had still found it in her heart to allow him—repressed homosexuality be damned—to try and kiss her at the end of the night, which had gone even worse than the dancing. At least Mike knew he could trust Mick not to stop talking to him after being exposed to his dancing talent like she had. Not that he could blame her, though.

“We need the right tunes,” Mick announced, squatting before his dragon’s hoard of vintage music and running his finger over the labels. “Honestly, most of the shit you’d slow dance to bores me to death, so I don’t have much, but...aaah... _ aha. _ ” He pulled a tape out of the cabinet, the album art a photo of a man in a very 70s suede and leather jacket looking at the viewer like he was going to make love to them personally. “This is Al Green. Classic soul. The title track’s perfect for our purposes.”

The tape went into the stereo with a  _ clunk _ , and Mick returned to the middle of the living room with Mike, positioning himself in front of him in the few seconds of silence before the music started. “Alright,” Mick said as the horns and percussion in the song’s intro kicked in, “Show me what you know.”

Swallowing hard, Mike plopped his palms down on Mick’s shoulders, ignoring how stupid he probably looked reaching up to put them there, and tried not to envision the living room around them transforming into the high school gym decorated for homecoming. Then he attempted to sway back and forth, keeping his stern face fixed firmly on Mick’s, determined to maintain eye contact with him no matter how embarrassing his dancing skills were. 

Mick couldn’t contain a laugh, breaking into a grin. “Nuh-uh,” he chuckled over Al Green’s honey-sweet voice, “We don’t need to leave room for Jesus. Let’s try it like this.” He turned himself slightly so that he and Mike’s bodies were flush against each other, closing the gap that the awkward hands-on-shoulders stance created between them. “See how if I turn myself like this our ribcages touch?”

Mike nodded. The older man’s body suddenly felt firmer and warmer and smelled more of his cologne than usual, or maybe that was just the sultry music talking. “Uhuh,” he said.

“That’s what we want,” Mick went on. “Touching. And it leaves our hands free to put, you know, wherever.”

Instinctively, Mike wrapped his arms tightly around Mick’s back, and as the two began to move together, Mick placed one of his hands around his waist, the other touching softly to the back of Mike’s hair and nudging his head forward so that his cheek was nestled against his collarbone. “There we go,” Mick murmured. The rumble of his voice made Mike’s stomach flutter. “Now we just dance.” 

It really was as simple as that. The socks Mike wore helped him to slide freely around the living room tile, following the steps Mick made so that he didn’t have to think about where to put his feet. With the angle of Mick’s body, their toes never stepped on each other, as Mick’s leading foot was positioned so that their thighs made brief contact and his knee passed between Mike’s legs with every step, something Mike was becoming increasingly aware of.

“Ooh, listen to this, I love this part,” Mick whispered eagerly. “Since we’ve been together,” he sang along, “Loving you forever is what I  _ nee-ee-ee-eeed _ —”

Dancing, Mick could do, but hitting falsetto notes as well as Al Green, maybe not. He didn’t want to laugh at him, but Mike couldn’t help it, sputtering out a giggle and nuzzling his face further into the crook of his neck, and Mick laughed along with him, stroking his hair while they danced in circles and humming the rest of the song. Mike could have fallen asleep right where he stood, letting his eyelids flutter closed and pressing himself into the vibrations from deep in Mick’s chest.

“I think you’re gonna be fine,” Mick said.

Mike came out of his little trance. “Huh?”

“At the wedding. You’re not as bad a dancer as you think, man.” 

“I guess, but I’m just kinda moving with you.”

“That’s all you gotta do.” The song faded out into the next on the tape as Mick tilted Mike’s head up and pressed their lips softly together, still leading them around the living room. 

Inhaling deeply through his nose and getting another intoxicating whiff of his cologne, Mike moved his hands down Mick’s back and let them settle on the waistband of his sweatpants, tugging on it to bring his body closer, if that was possible. Mick chuckled into his mouth and kissed him deeper. Deliberately, Mike knew, he stepped in such a way that his knee brushed against more than just his inner thigh, which sent a surge of heat through the younger man’s body that melted away any shyness or embarrassment that was left in him. 

The next track on the album was slightly quicker and bouncier than the first, which was perfectly suited to the way Mike suddenly took control of the dance, his lips demanding another kiss with every confident swell of the horns and drums. 

“I don’t think we should dance like  _ this _ in front of everyone,” Mick joked against his mouth, unable to keep his hands from wandering into the back of Mike’s flannel pajama pants and giving his ass a squeeze, then groaned as Mike scoffed and bit his lower lip. He didn’t realize he was being danced in the direction of the couch until the backs of his knees made contact with it and buckled, sending him flopping down into a seated position where he was pinned under the weight of Mike clambering on top of him. 

Between the hungry kisses and bites, he made a mental note to play more Al Green around the house. His fingertips made dimples in Mike’s ass, slipping under his clothes again to grab and massage his skin, and he was grateful that neither of them ever wore underwear at home. 

“Fuck me,” Mike ordered, gyrating his hips to increase the friction between both Mick’s hands and his cock. “Right here.” Obediently, Mick quickly removed and discarded both of their t-shirts, just as amazed as ever at the supple body that hid underneath Mike’s oversized clothing. Then he popped his index finger into his mouth, slicking it up with his own spit, before his hand dove into Mike’s pants again to circle it teasingly around his hole, eliciting the tiniest gasp from him when he pushed it inside. 

That wasn’t going to be enough, though. When he quickly grew impatient for more stimulation, Mike leaned off to the side and reached into the drawer of the little table next to the couch to retrieve the bottle of lube stashed there. He rushed to shimmy out of his pants and returned to facing Mick, kissing him again and popping the bottle open to dispense its contents onto Mick’s waiting fingers. Once they were sufficiently slick, Mike tossed the lube aside and a moan hitched in his throat as Mick pushed two of them at once into his hole, as far as he could reach at the somewhat awkward angle. 

By then, the tape had moved on to the third track. Mick was humming along again, adding a third finger and fucking Mike open in time with the music until he was bouncing his hips to bring them deeper inside himself. “You want me to fuck you, huh?” he asked, a rhetorical question, and Mike nodded an  _ uh-huh _ before he could finish the sentence.

Mike clung onto him as he raised his pelvis up and slid his sweatpants down just enough to free his cock, which sprung out eagerly and landed heavily against his hipbone. “Oh, fuck, I want that in my ass,” Mike said, like he’d never seen it before, practically salivating and grabbing the lube again, squirting a generous amount into his palm to pump Mick’s dick until it glistened. Then he positioned himself over it, guiding the head to his hole, only relinquishing control when the slow, intense stretch of it pressing deeper and deeper into him was too much for him to keep his hands from wrapping around behind Mick’s head and balling into fists in his hair. 

“Ugh, fuck, Mike,” Mick growled, shivering at the tight heat around him. But he didn’t move, as hard as it was to fight the urge. Instead, he waited, bracing his hands tightly on Mike’s ass and letting him set the pace. Eventually, he began to fuck himself, slowly and carefully bringing his hips up, and then down, squeaking out little sounds into Mick’s ear. 

“O-oh, my god, Mick,” he gasped, as if the other man was doing any of the work. He was fully pinned under Mike’s dense form, and all he could do was slide his hands up and down Mike’s spine, then into his hair, taking a handful of it in a gentle grip and pulling him into another eager kiss. He cupped the sides of Mike’s face, his normally soft and boyish features hardened by brows furrowed in pleasure and concentration, his lips wet and swollen and red like the hot flush that spread across his cheeks and the head of his dick that was already drooling a stream of pre onto the trail of graying hair on Mick’s belly. 

After a long, long while of grinding on his cock until Mick was digging his nails into the chubby muscle at his sides, desperate for more of him, Mike finally picked up speed. He crossed his arms behind Mick’s neck, whining his name and whispering unintelligible dirty talk, his ass landing with an audible  _ pap _ every time he brought himself down on his cock again. “Goddamn, baby,  _ damn _ ,” Mick hissed, clawing at him and pulling on him wherever his fingers found purchase just to bring him closer. If he could, he would climb inside of him just to feel more of his body heat and racing pulse, to surround himself in this boy. For now, he would have to settle for thrusting his tongue into Mike’s mouth and swallowing all of his cute little whining sounds.

“My th— _ ah _ —my thighs are getting tired,” Mike whispered after another while. Mick knew what to do, grabbing and lifting him to roll sideways, laying him on his back on the couch and reveling in how sweet he looked with his pale olive complexion contrasted against the black leather, his messy hair splayed out around his head. Every time Mick laid him down like this, stretched out so that his eyes could dart around his smooth skin dotted with scattered moles and the contrasting angles and curves on his compact body, he wanted to run and grab his camera to document it and show the world, and ask them  _ Are you seeing this?! _ It still baffled him that a scruffy-chinned skater like Mike could be the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen.

“Keep going,” Mike breathed, letting his thick thighs fall open and jerking himself off, closing his eyes and getting lost in his lust for the man hovering above him. He could have made himself cum just laying there thinking about him and masturbating, but he wanted his orgasm to come with Mick’s cock buried as deep in him as it would go, preferably filling him to the brim with at least one load first. “Just fuck me ‘til I can’t walk— _ ah! _ ” His voice cracked in a little yelp at the sensation of Mick’s warm mouth closing around his cock. 

“I don’t want to cum yet,” he said plainly, meeting Mike’s heavy-lidded gaze with a seductive look of his own. 

Mike would have called him a motherfucker, or at least slapped him on the top of the head, for being so good at working him up, but unfortunately he had him too worked up to do anything more than arch his back and keen incoherently as Mick swallowed him down to the balls, making a point to slurp and lick his cock as sloppily as possible. He planted a little kiss on the mole on the underside of it before softly sucking on his sack and stroking him, swirling his thumb around the head, leaving Mike a swearing mess above him. “Fffuck you fuck oh fuck I love you,” he rambled, unable to form a complete sentence but sure he was getting his point across anyway. He didn’t understand how Mick could just stop mid-fuck, delay his own satisfaction, just to suck his dick, just to make  _ him _ feel good for as long as possible, but he figured that was just another way that he knew Mick was the man he wanted to marry. 

“You’re gonna make me shoot, dude,” he barely managed to gasp out, tangling his fist in the other man’s hair. He knew that Mick would pull away as soon as he said it, but he still whimpered, bucking his hips up in a last-ditch effort to impulsively cum down his throat. But Mick knew that wasn’t what he really wanted, and that he could make him cum even harder if he fucked the orgasm out of him, so he caught his legs, pushing them up so that his knees nearly touched his chest, whistling his appreciation for how absolutely debauched he looked in that position. His hole was still slicked up with lube and took his cock easily as Mick thrusted in one smooth motion until his pubes came to rest directly against Mike’s skin. 

Neither of them could last much longer, so Mick gave it his all, letting his full weight fall upon Mike and using his bulkier, more muscular build to his advantage to fuck him with the kind of force he wanted. “Oh, jeez, Mick, fuck, fuck me,” Mike moaned frantically. The first side of the tape had long since ended, leaving them in silence soundtracked only by their voices and the slap of skin against skin. “I’m—you...y...fuck—oh  _ god, baby _ ,” he sobbed, raking his nails down Mick’s back and yanking him forward. Mick’s elbows gave out and his face landed in the crook of Mike’s neck, and he ran with it, bracing his thick biceps around him and pounding him until he sounded like he might cry. His stocky legs wrapped around Mick’s lower back and pulled him in even deeper, trapping him there. Mick wouldn’t mind being stuck inside him forever, he thought, but his own orgasm was quickly building inside him, and before he had time to announce it he was grunting and squeaking and losing the rhythm in his hips as his cock pulsed inside of Mike, dumping a thick load into him. 

The hot feeling of being filled up pushed Mike over the edge soon after, his own cum landing on his belly in a few fat spurts that dribbled off to the side and puddled on the couch as he and Mick kept rocking together, his cock still twitching and buried inside him until their shivering and convulsing had stopped. Mick kissed him with a dry mouth and scratchy throat and eventually pulled out, making Mike tremble one more time before they collapsed into each other. 

“Okay, so we can’t dance to that song,” Mike sighed after a minute, his steady breathing making Mick’s head rise and fall on top of his chest. “It makes us too horny.”

“Think you can dance at the wedding now, though?” Mick asked, crossing his arms in front of him and resting his chin there.

Mike combed his fingers affectionately through Mick’s hair. “Yeah,” he said with a sleepy-eyed grin, “But you’re gonna have to bridal carry me to the shower first.” 


	2. Confessions of a Middle-Aged Yogi

“Michael, do you have anything to confess to me?”

The yogi lowered the mystery novel he was reading, blinking at B. “Confess?”

B nodded. “I’m reading this article about being open and honest with your partner.” They pointed to their current page in  _ Psychology Today _ . “And it says that all couples keep embarrassing secrets from each other because we fear our partners seeing us like that.”

“Hrm,” the yogi grumbled. 

“But in an ideal relationship,” B said, reading off the article text, “Neither party involved will fear embarrassing themselves in front of the person they love.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever embarrassed myself in front of you,” the yogi said, sticking his nose back into his book. “Not yet, at least.”

B tossed their magazine aside and laid their head against the yogi’s bare shoulder. “But what about  _ not _ in front of me?” 

The yogi grumbled with a question mark.

“The point of the article is telling your partner about embarrassing stuff that they weren’t there to see. You know, like, stuff we want to keep a secret but should be honest about.

“...I don’t have any embarrassing secrets,” the yogi said stiffly.

B knew him too well to take his word on that. “I’ll tell you one of mine,” they said, petting his chest hair. “When I first met you I texted Mike, like, every day after class because I thought you were really hot but I didn’t know how to talk to you. Some of the stuff I said was  _ so _ embarrassing.”

The yogi chuckled. “I’d like to read what you were saying about me.”

“Most of it was me talking about how hot you are. Oh, and one time I cried in the bathroom at the studio!”

“What did you do that for?”

“Because you were really hot! And I didn’t know how to talk to you!”

Scoffing, the yogi turned a page. He was putting up a front, B knew—when he was unresponsive like this, he was hiding something. There  _ had _ to be a secret thing he’d never told them about, and B was determined to know what it was. “Did you do anything like that when we met?” they asked, draping their torso across his lap. Their cropped pajama shirt bunched up and exposed their tight, tan abdomen, their navel piercing glinting with light reflected from the strings of LEDs hung around the bed.

“I definitely didn’t cry in the bathroom,” the yogi smirked dryly. 

“You didn’t talk to Mick about me?” 

“No, I did.” He adjusted his glasses on his nose. “But it wasn’t embarrassing.” That was a bald-faced lie, but B didn’t have to know about how Mick had teased him for falling for them.

B paused for a long time, narrowing their eyes at him. “I used to jerk off while I thought about you,” they finally said. “Did you ever do that?”

The yogi’s fingers tightened around the paperback cover of the book in his hands. “...No,” he said, bluntly, pretending to continue reading but really looking away at the wall. “I would never.”

_ Ah _ ! B thought. Already, a pink flush was creeping into the yogi’s cheeks. He turned a page anxiously, without having actually read the last one. “Really?” B probed, “Because I used to think about you every night.” They stretched out in his lap, knowing that raising their arms would pull the bottom hem of their crop top up just enough to expose the underside of their tits, but not enough to reveal anything important, and crossed their legs casually. They traced circles around his stomach with their fingertip and fluttered their eyelashes up at him, even though he was avoiding eye contact. “I thought you were so sexy. Sometimes I still want to do it, when you’re not around, but if you’re not into that then I guess I could stop…”

Tight-lipped, the yogi darted his gaze quickly in B’s direction, taking just a peek at their body, then looked away again, but not for long, coming back to take another look a fraction of a second later. B was grinning like a cat up at him, snaking their hand down to the waistband of their panties, which he noticed matched their pink-painted nails, but stopped there and left their palm resting over the tiny pizza slice tattooed on their soft hipbone. Had he not been shirtless, he would have tugged at his collar. B was too good at this. “Alright,” he sighed, “Maybe I did.”

“Did what?” B cooed.

“Maybe I...” He shielded his face with his hand and turned his head away. “Masturbated,” he mumbled.

“ _ Masturbated _ ,” B parroted, giggling at the clinical choice of words. It was adorable that the yogi, the man with whom they’d had intimate, soul-connecting, tantric sex dozens and dozens of times, who slept fully ass-out naked next to them every night, was apparently embarrassed to talk about jerking off. “You beat your meat to lil’ ol’ me?”

“A few times. Before we started dating. I haven’t done it since then.” The yogi sounded like he might choke on his words and die of embarrassment, and his face was as red as a tomato. Unfortunately for him, B was laying on top of the blankets, which he wanted to pull up over his head and hide underneath forever.

But B had other plans. “You should do it now,” they said. 

“...What do you mean?”

“You should masturbate to me right now, with me in front of you.”

B had never seen him look so wide-eyed and bashful. There was practically steam coming out of his ears. “I...er...but...” he stuttered, “I don’t know about that, hon.”

Frowning up at him, B worried that they were pushing him into something uncomfortable. “Oh, Michael, I’m sorry,” they apologized, “I’ll stop if you’re shy about this.”

The thing was, the yogi was already sporting a half-chub under the blankets, and he  _ did _ feel like tending to it. But...“I just...don’t look good when I masturbate,” he said meekly, rubbing the back of his own neck nervously. “I’m not  _ shy _ . I’d do it for you, it’s just not a pretty sight.”

B scoffed and gave him a weak, loving little slap on the stomach. “Michael!” Sitting up, they brought their faces close enough to kiss, hushing their voice. “Everything about you is a pretty sight.”

The yogi gave them a cynical smile, but with B straddling him, even through layers of crocheted blanket, the position brought more attention to the semi-erection he was still sporting, and their sparkling ocean-blue eyes and faintly fruity, sweet scent did nothing to make it soften. He waited for a long moment, just staring at them, thinking, but then slowly, tentatively, he reached down between their bodies, giving his cock a cautious squeeze under the cover of the bedding like he was prepubescent and doing it for the first time. 

Stars lit up in B’s expression when they realized where his hand had gone. They squeaked excitedly and moved over to kneel at his side, giving him more room to do it. “Can I take the blankets off you?” Chewing his lip, the yogi nodded an affirmation. In one swift motion they pulled them away, gleefully staring at his thick, rough fingers wrapped firmly around the shaft of his stout cock. Then they shimmied on their knees inbetween his spread legs, posing in front of him like they were on the cover of the skin mags Mike used to steal from gas stations in high school. “I’m gonna strip for you,” they laughed, arching their back and running their hands sensually from their ribcage down to their smooth thighs. 

It was equally as impossible to peel his eyes away from B’s body, their slender hands lifting their shirt torturously slowly, as it was to look at their face. The yogi felt so exposed, like every roll and wrinkle and hair and blemish on his skin was on full display, and he  _ knew _ his neck must have looked horrifically fat with his head reclining back against the pillows, but B didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t following their eyes—he couldn’t—but he could feel them watching him, watching the way he stroked himself slowly to the sight of their perfect, lean-muscled body. They contrasted so starkly with his short, pale, aging, roly-poly little self. But he could sense their adoring smile as they reached up to shake their hair out of the scrunchie at the top of their head, letting it fall freely over their shoulders.

Holding the bottom hem of their shirt in their teeth, B shifted focus to their panties, hooking their thumbs in the leg holes where their bikini tan peeked out from behind the fabric. Fuck, they were beautiful. The yogi’s cock pulsed in his hand, twitching and growing closer to a full erection. He still touched himself slowly and methodically, apprehensive to do it with the same fervor he would have used if he were actually alone and fantasizing about B. 

Then they pulled their panties down just enough to free their smooth balls and pretty little cock, letting the fabric rest just underneath them, and the yogi squeezed his eyes shut, another surge of hot blood rushing through his body to his own dick. 

“You don’t want to look at me?” B asked, their voice as sweet as honey. When the yogi popped one eye open, they had removed their shirt entirely and scooted in closer, groping their tits and making little high-pitched noises in response to their own teasing touches. The yogi grunted through his nose and turned his head to the side, his cheeks burning. He pumped his cock and groaned. 

“What if I go over here,” B said, sliding out from between his legs and settling themself right up against his left side, “And I talk into your ear?” The yogi didn’t have much of an answer besides heavy, sighing breaths. “Just think about me like you used to do.” Their voice was a low, sultry murmur that dropped into a whisper. “Did you think about fucking me, Michael?”

He nodded, bringing his free hand up to his mouth and biting down hard on his balled-up fist. A spurt of precum dribbled down over the yogi’s fingers and added extra lubrication, the fat head of his cock glistening beautifully, B thought, in the subtle pink-tinted lighting of the curtained-off nook that served as the Bowens’ bedroom. 

“That’s good,” B continued, “Because I used to think about you fucking me.” Their breath was hot against his ear, their lips barely brushing against it before they took it gingerly into their mouth, sucking on his earlobe and then pressing a tickling kiss to the junction where it connected to his jawline. “I would sit in my bed...and I would spread my legs...and touch myself.” The yogi could feel their hand slinking downward, inching closer to their dick between every pause. They nudged their forehead into his, clouding his senses with the citrusy scent of their hair and keeping the moans they elicited from themself contained within the few centimeters of space between their faces. 

If he chewed his lip any harder, the yogi was going to make himself bleed. His chest heaved with labored breaths as he thought about B doing exactly what they were describing, picturing them splayed out naked, holding the tip of a vibrator to their cock while their thighs trembled, making the same wanton sounds that escaped their lips now. “Hon... _ ugh _ ,” he tried to say, cutting himself off with his own gasping breaths. 

“Sometimes,” B muttered, “I would fuck myself with my fingers...” With his eyes still closed, the yogi couldn’t see them raise their index finger to their lips, but he heard their wet lips close around it. By the time he had opened his eyes to investigate, they were pressing it to his hole. “Want me to?” they asked, meeting his heavy-lidded stare with a warm smile. The yogi spread his legs further apart in response and inhaled deeply as they pushed the slender finger inside of him, sinking it in all the way down to the knuckle and finding his prostate. 

The yogi finally, unable to hold it back anymore, moaned softly, rocking his hips and pumping his cock in time with the rhythmic thrusting pace that B had set. He wasn’t going to last much longer, he knew, not with B fingering him and giggling and kissing his neck all at once. “B, hon, honey,” he stammered, “I’m...oh, please—” When their kisses trailed down his chest and ended up at one of his nipples, where B latched on to suck and lap at it, he tensed, bucking his hips up, and came in thick ropes, growling and hissing and twitching until it hurt to jerk his cock anymore. 

It was too much work to think straight after the final few waves of his orgasm washed over him. Red-faced, somehow looking like he’d just been fucked raw for three hours, he simply laid back like a heavy lump while B crouched over his body to lick up the mess he’d made on his belly. “You looked so good,” they said, swallowing a mouthful of cum. “That was super hot!” 

Eventually, the ability to sit up returned. Hoisting himself off of his back, he grabbed B in a bear hug and rolled with them until  _ they  _ were on their back. They squealed as he dove between their legs to return the favor. 


	3. Happy Birthday (B)arbie

Today was Bungle’s birthday. Mike wasn’t going to the party or anything—Mr. and Mrs. Bungleton wouldn’t let him into their house anymore, and the party was tomorrow, anyway, when he had basketball practice—but he didn’t need a party to know that Bungle was turning twelve. He always remembered his best friend’s birthday, and the twelfth one was extra special. There wasn’t any particular reason for that; Mike remembered his own twelfth birthday a year ago as nothing amazing(not that his ever were), but for Bungle, who would always have the unfortunate distinction of being the youngest kid in class, every year closer to becoming an actual teenager was something worth celebrating.

It sucked that he didn’t have a present for him this year, though. That had _never_ happened before, not once since they met in elementary school, because Mike had always managed to scrounge up something, from the cookie he’d offered him from his lunch tray in third grade(on the last day of school as an advance gift, because he’d felt bad that Bungle didn’t get to have his birthday during school)to his tenth birthday, when Mike had saved up a year’s worth of allowance and lunch money to buy him a stack of cassettes, the only familiar name on ny of them being Madonna—seriously, how did Bungle even know who Taylor Dayne was?—that his parents wouldn’t buy for him.

But Mike’s dad didn’t give him an allowance anymore, and he’d already spent his food money for the day on the Double Gulp Slurpee in his hand and the bag of cheese puffs that he could hear crinkling around in his backpack behind him as he pedalled up to the bike rack outside the YMCA.

The metal rack had been sitting in the late-June sun all day and was so blistering hot that Mike thought he might burst into flames if he touched it, so he haphazardly shoved his bike into an open spot from few feet away. Out of all the different buildings around Pristina where Bungle did his thousands of extracurricular things, sports and camps and workshops and courses, the YMCA was Mike’s least favorite just for how little shade there was outside while he waited for him to finish whatever it was he was doing in there this week. He could have gone inside to wait, but the desk staff always gave him weird looks and asked if he was okay, so instead he chose to loiter outside, basking in the sweltering heat and the smell of hot pavement as he stared at his sneakers and shuffled around the sidewalk that led to the entrance.

“Young man…” he muttered to himself, “There’s no need to feel down…”

He really did feel terrible about the lack of a birthday gift, though.

“I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground, I said, young man…”

Bungle always gave _him_ a gift for _his_ birthday, and Mike knew his parents hated him, so it must have been a feat to convince them to buy it.

“‘Cuz you’re in a new town…” He scraped the soles of his ratty Skechers on the ground in time with the song, walking down to the far corner of the building where there weren’t even any shadows cast by its walls to keep the pavement cooler.

“There’s no need...to...be...unhappy…” And then, in a moment that for years to come would make Mike think twice about his spirituality, he just so happened to look up from his feet and straight ahead at a little crumpled shape that lay on the ground a few feet ahead of him, calling to him like an oasis of water in the desert of sidewalk. At first glance it looked like a piece of trash, maybe a gum wrapper, or it could be a fallen leaf, but it was only June. Approaching closer, he squatted to pick it up, jolting back upright when he unfolded it and had a twenty dollar bill in his hands.

Was it some kind of good-luck ritual to sing the Village People outside the YMCA?

Regardless of whether it was fate or luck or the charitable ghost of Glenn Hughes, Mike now had twenty dollars, which was significantly more dollars than he had a minute ago, and which was plenty of money to buy Bungle a birthday present.

But was there enough _time_? He shot an anxious look at the big, marquee-letter bulletin on the sign for the building, under the YMCA logo:

**YOUTH SWIM LESSONS**

**3 TO 4 PM TODAY**

Then he rolled up his sweaty undershirt sleeve to check his wristwatch. The sun’s glare made it hard to make out, but it looked like 3:59 PM under Donatello’s face.

_Crap_. That meant Bungle was finishing class right now, and he’d be outside soon to wait for his mom to pick him up, and his mom never took longer than fifteen minutes to pick him up from anything. Mike had to get him a present _today_ , because tomorrow he wouldn’t see him, and by the next day the gift would have been two days late, and what kind of awful friend gave a birthday present two days late?

There was a toy store that Mike had heard the kids at school talk about, but never been to himself, in a strip mall a little way down the main road in town. If he pedalled like he did when Mr. Bungleton was chasing him out of his driveway, he could make it there, find something good, and get back(hopefully)before Mrs. Bungleton arrived to take her son home. He could pull that off, he knew he could. Or, at least he had hope that he could, and that’s what mattered, right? The twenty was a sign from God, or something. Besides, he _had_ to succeed at this, for Bungle’s sake, or else he wasn’t worthy to call himself his best friend.

Wheeling his bike off of the rack was like trying to take pizza rolls out of the oven bare-handed. He hissed and winced and cursed the thing, but then his bike was free, and he set his Slurpee down after one last massive gulp that made his teeth hurt, mounted it, adjusted his backpack on his shoulders, and took off down the street.

To get to the main road, he first had to go down to the end of the side street that the YMCA sat on, and of course there was a summer camp group of little kids on a walk with their camp counselors, all holding hands to cross in a huge, unavoidable cluster of tiny tie-dyed shirts. Mike tapped his handlebars and bounced impatiently while they passed, trying his hardest to be patient. The last kid to cross tripped off the curb and scraped his knee. Mike jumped off of his bike, helped him up and dusted the kid’s shorts off. He was crying, and Mike felt bad for him, but he had places to be, so he nudged the kid toward the rest of the group, got back on his bike, and screeched away for the stop sign at the end of the street, which he almost crashed into taking the sharp turn to the main highway.

He skidded to a stop at the intersection, checking his watch again. _Crap!_ Now it was 4:05?! Bungle’s mom was probably halfway to the freaking Y by now! Cars honked and drivers hollered out of their windows as he made a dash across the road, which was stupid and dangerous and almost got him hit by a truck, but he didn’t have time to wait around for the light to change.

Now it was a straight shot down the sidewalk to the toy store, but it was a little over two miles away. He was going to have to pedal even faster than he did when Bungle’s dad was after him; he would have to pedal like he’d just missed the school bus and he knew his dad would kill him for being late. But faster.

He needed another Village People song for luck. There was only one other song of theirs that he could remember from Bungle’s tapes.

“Body, wanna feel my body…” he huffed and puffed to himself. He didn’t remember the words to this one, so he grunted the tune to himself between the parts he did know while he picked up speed. “Body, it’s too much, my body, check it out, my body…”

Every crack in the sidewalk and piece of litter and half-decayed dead bird threatened to send Mike flying off the bike, but he pushed on until he reached a pedalling speed that he was sure was going to leave his leg muscles burning in agony later. Dad was going to be so pissed at him at basketball tomorrow for being so slow on his feet, but right now he didn’t care. He was on a mission from either God or Glenn Hughes.

The closer he got to the strip mall, the more pedestrians got in his way. “Hey!” he barked as he wove precariously around them. “Hey!” His tires nearly spun out around an old bag lady pushing a cart. “Hey!! Hey-hey-hey!”

The lady swiped at him with her cane, but he swerved out of her way, and finally the strip mall came into view, in all its aging glory, with its sun-faded awnings and weathered parking lot, and there at the end was Gluey’s Toys, the promised land. Mike stumbled off of his bike, practically throwing it against the trash can outside the door, startling some loitering high schoolers. His backpack jostled behind him and smacked into the doorframe, probably turning his cheese puffs to dust as he exploded into the shop.

Once inside, the realization that he had no idea exactly _what_ he was here to buy hit him as sharply as the blast of cold air conditioning.

“Easy on the entry, kiddo,” a stocky man with wild, curly hair called from behind the checkout counter. “Almost took out the Micro Machines, there.”

Mike turned stiffly to look at the wobbling rack of little cars in cardboard packages. Bungle wouldn’t want those. “Sorry,” he said, turning back to the man, but he had disappeared under the counter to organize the display case of rare trading cards and comics, so mike instead turned his eyes to the shop as a whole, frozen in awe at the apparent vastness of it. The space itself was cramped, but there was so much _stuff_. He had never been inside a toy store before, but this place was everything he’d imagined one to be: racks and shelves and walls stuffed to bursting with cardboard and plastic in every color of the rainbow, stuffed animals so diverse he didn’t even know what some of them were supposed to be. It smelled strongly of bubble gum, and some kind of grungey rock music played from a stereo behind the counter.

Oh, jeez, there were so many toys, so many options, and there was so little time to shop, where was he even going to start—

_Wait._ There, at the back of the store. Mike’s tunnel vision zeroed in on the pinkest, girliest thing in the shop: a towering display of Barbie dolls.

He just about teleported over to them, looking them up and down and all around, taking in all of their little smiling faces. A long time ago, maybe in fifth grade, Mike had once asked for a girl toy in his Happy Meal, because at the time they were coming with miniature Barbie dolls, the kind with hard plastic bodies and gravity-defying manes of shiny synthetic hair with a tiny hairbrush to groom them. His parents had a fight about it in the car, because they hadn’t been listening when he tried to tell them that it was for _Bungle,_ not himself, but Mike never understood why it was such a bad thing for boys to like girly stuff, anyway.

And Bungle _loved_ girly stuff. His parents didn’t approve of it; when they had thrown out the Happy Meal Barbie, Bungle had cried on Mike’s shoulder about it the next day at recess.

He figured a replacement—a _real_ Barbie this time—would make an excellent birthday present. If he could only decide which one to buy.

Cardboard packaging clunked together as he tore into the display, trying as fast as he could to find the perfect doll. He dared not look at his watch. All he needed to know was that he had to hurry. He started dropping rejects on the floor when his arms became too full of boxes. Perfume Pretty Barbie was too frilly for Bungle’s taste, he thought. Island Fun Barbie had an ugly skirt. Costume Ball Barbie’s dress was too poofy, Lights and Lace Barbie had a big stupid bow on her head, all of the wedding Barbies would have been weird because Bungle wasn’t getting married and _definitely_ didn’t want to be a bride...Ugh! It was too hard!

“You’re into Barbies, huh?”

Mike jumped at the counter guy’s voice behind him, dropping all of the boxes he held in his arms. “Crap, sorry,” he said, quickly crouching to put them back on the shelf. “I’ll put them back, sorry, I’m just looking for my friend—” The boxes only fell and made a bigger mess as he tried frantically to fix them, and he pulled at his hair in frustration.

“Woah, slow down,” the counter guy said. “It’s cool. I’ll take care of these.” He began to calmly reorganize the dolls. “You’re looking for a Barbie for your friend?”

“Uh-huh,” Mike said, still fretfully balling his hands up in his hair.

“Birthday?”

“Yeah,” Mike answered, before blurting out the whole saga up to this point: “It’s his birthday today and I’m not gonna see him tomorrow because I have basketball and I can’t go to his party but I gotta give it to him today ‘cuz I don’t want it to be two days late and he really likes—”

The man put a hand up to pause him. “You said it’s _his_ birthday tomorrow?”

Mike nodded like he belonged on the bobblehead display. “He’s my best friend and he really likes Barbies and girl stuff.” He puffed himself up a little bit. “And there’s nothing wrong with that!”

“Hey, man, I don’t judge,” the man shrugged, his many coils of graying hair bouncing in slow-motion. Then he rummaged through the Barbie pile, plucking a particular box out of the mess. “...How about California Dream Barbie?”

He held up a box containing the Bungliest Barbie that Mike had ever seen, in a sporty hot pink two-piece surf suit and a yellow vest, with a funky skirt and clashing patterns all over. She even had a little pair of pink sunglasses and a matching camera, and a waterfall of sun-bleached blond hair.

“That’s perfect!” He snatched the box from the counter guy and ran to the correlative counter. “Okay I’m ready to pay now please I don’t have a lot of time—”

Once he joined Mike at the register, at a leisurely pace that had him bouncing impatiently again, Mike finally read the man’s nametag. “Please hurry, Buzz,” he begged.

The register popped open and the counter-guy-also-known-as-Buzz cocked an eyebrow at him. “Ten forty-nine for me,” he said, already having the crinkled twenty thrust into his hand. Mike could swear he was deliberately taking as long as humanly possibly to make change. “Nine fifty-one for you. Do you want me to put that in a bag?”

But Mike was already stuffing the change into his back pocket, his backpack hitting the doorframe again as he yelled a hasty thank-you and goodbye over his shoulder, and the door jingled shut behind him.

Outside, he threw his backpack off and to the ground, wrenching the zipper open and trying to fit the doll in. The same high schoolers he had startled on his way into the store watched him struggle with mocking smirks on their faces, but there was no time to care about being made fun of. The bag of cheese puffs took up too much space in his backpack to fit the Barbie in, and he would have to make the ride back to the YMCA holding it.

“That for your little sister?” snickered one of the older kids.

“I don’t have a sister,” Mike scowled back, mounting his bike and shoving the box under his arm. “It’s for my best friend and it’s his birthday and I have to go!”

Mercifully, the sidewalk was clear for the mad dash back to the intersection(except for the bag lady, who squawked something rude at him as he passed), and when he made it there, the light was just about to change for crossing. He decided to wait for the signal this time—it pained him to waste precious seconds, but if he got hit by a car it might ruin Bungle’s present. He took the moment to check his watch.

“ _4:17_?!” he screamed in horror, just as the light changed and the little crossing signal man appeared.

He was so doomed. Bungle’s mom had probably already picked him up, which meant Mike would have to go home with the doll and give it to him late like a total turd of a friend, assuming his dad didn’t give him a black eye in the meantime for wasting money on “fag stuff” like he did every time Mike bought anything for him.

Either that or Mike would get there at the same time as Mrs. Bungleton, and she would see the doll and Mike holding it and she would know what was going on, and pull Bungle by the ear into the car to be grounded for a week from hanging out with him.

Neither outcome was good, but at least the former would only get himself in trouble. Mike hoped that Bungle would be gone, for his sake, as he biked the last stretch up to the YMCA, but when he got there, he saw the distant figure of who could only have been Bungle, because only he worse swim shorts that pink, sitting _alone_ on the bench outside, with his duffel bag next to him. Today was truly full of miracles.

“BUNGLE!” he hollered as he drew near, catching his attention. Bungle stood up to wave at him. “ _Bungle,_ Bungle Bungle Bungle— _oof._ ” The front end of his bike came up hard on the curb, throwing him out of his seat, but he managed to land on his feet without the doll coming untucked from under his arm and blundered awkwardly into a sprint toward his friend.

“What are you doing?” Bungle began to laugh, before Mike cut him off with a tackle into the YMCA’s grassy, manicured lawn. “Dude!”

“Happy birthday, B!” Mike announced, sitting up in the grass to ruffle Bungle’s still-damp hair. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath.

Bungle smeared a grass stain off of his cheek with the back of his hand, giggling at what a doofus Mike was. “You reek, dude. Did you just run a mile?”

“I went to the toy store,” Mike explained. “But I had to go really fast because I found twenty dollars and I didn’t have a lot of time so I went to Gluey’s but I had to get back before your mom got here because I got you a thing but—”

“Wait, wha…?”

Rather than waste any more time explaining the story again, he reached for the Barbie box, which had landed at his side, and thrust it triumphantly into the air above their heads. “I got you a present!”

Bungle’s jaw dropped and his eyes bugged as the box was passed into his hands. He sat staring at it in his lap, not shredding it open like Mike expected him to, but just looking at it, turning it around to see the artwork on all four sides and running his fingertips over the clear plastic window through which she grinned out at him. “You got this for me?”

“I hope you like it,” Mike said, nervously twiddling his thumbs. “Sorry it’s not wrapped.” Maybe it was _too_ girly, he worried.

“She’s so pretty, Bungle said, starry-eyed. “I love her skirt...and her hair is so big….oh my god, dude, she has a little camera, M-Mike…”

“Oh no, dude, don’t cry!” Panicking, Mike wrapped a comforting, if sweaty, arm around him. “Jeez, if I knew it was gonna make you cry I woulda got something else!”

Bungle snuffled back his tears and hugged the box to his chest. “It’s happy crying,” he laughed. “Thank you so much, dude.” He stood up, carrying the box like a newborn baby to his duffel bag. “I better hide this before my mom gets here, though,” he said, unzipping it and shoving aside his spare clothes and shoes and deflated water wings to carve out a space at the very bottom for the Barbie, and then burying it under everything in the bag.

“Where is your mom, anyway?” Mike asked as Bungle flopped down beside him again. Both boys laid back on the warm grass, the heat of the afternoon starting to give way to the cooler early evening.

“She’s late today because I asked her to stop at McDonald’s,” Bungle said, stretching and yawning.

“Wow, she just does that if you ask?”

“If I say ‘please’ enough.”

“Woah. My dad hasn’t taken me to McD’s in forever.”

“She’s getting you chicken nuggets.”

Mike shot upright. “What?!” Bungle only smirked coyly at him. “Why?”

“Since you can’t come to my house tomorrow, she said you could come over for dinner tonight, but we have to stay in the backyard.”

“ _How_?”

“I cried about it until she said yes,” Bungle said.

“You sly dog,” Mike smirked back, elbowing him in the side.

When Mrs. Bungleton finally arrived, really did have a whole chicken nugget Happy Meal waiting for him in the front seat, since the boys weren’t allowed to eat in the car. He climbed in, doing his best not to tangle his sneakers up in the beach towel draped over the backseat, and was slumped over asleep on Bungle’s shoulder by the time they pulled into his driveway.

 


End file.
